This repo contains a CLI program that scans a local directory for images and generates a simple HTML gallery using the experimental CSS Masonry layout. The gallery file generated is left in the directory, so in the future, you can just open it in a browser.
The CSS Masonry option does a great job of using up all of the available space in the window. It also works well with browser scaling/zooming. I like the experience of browsing images this way much more than the default Windows file explorer with the "Extra large icons" view mode.
- Generate a minified HTML gallery with a masonry layout
- Randomize the order of the images
- Select and filter a subset of the images
View the example-gallery in GitHub Pages. Note the small icons on the top-right. Try clicking on a few images, then clicking the filter button.
Either grab a binary from a release and add it to your PATH or clone this repo and run go install.
Example with The Works of Zdzisław Beksiński:
PS C:\Users\Dom\Pictures\ZdzislawBeksinski> gall .
2024/04/29 11:40:36 Directory to be scanned: .
2024/04/29 11:40:36 Found 88 images in the directory
2024/04/29 11:40:36 1 non-images were excluded from the gallery
2024/04/29 11:40:36 Gallery created: C:\Users\Dom\Pictures\ZdzislawBeksinski\gal.html
gall ./some-dir # Generate default gallery in directory
gall ./some-dir -f # launch with firefox
gall ./some-dir -b # launch default browserAt the time of writing this, to use the Masonry layout in Firefox, navigate to about:config and set layout.css.grid-template-masonry-value.enabled to true.
Example gallery images generated with https://unsample.net/
The file template.html contains the unminified HTML template of the gallery page with a bit of CSS and JavaScript. This app simply loads that file and replaces the below placeholders with some text and HTML.
| Placeholder | Content |
|---|---|
<!-- GALLERY_CONTENTS --> |
Gallery images |
<!-- GALLERY_TITLE --> |
Gallery title |
<!-- GALLERY_INFO --> |
Gallery info |
To make this app a bit easier to use on my Windows 11 machine, I added it as an option to my context menu when right clicking a folder or the background pane of an open folder. This is what it looks like:
This uses a tool called Nilesoft Shell. Once installed, simply add the following to your shell.nss:
menu(type='back|dir' mode="multiple" title='dominickp/gall' image=\uE1F4)
{
item(title = 'Generate Gallery' cmd='gall' arg='.')
item(title = 'Generate Gallery (launch Firefox)' cmd='gall' arg='. -f')
}